Retail Media is Fastest Growing Form of Ad Spend; Microsoft’s Deal with Mistral AI Faces EU Scrutiny; Investors Push Apple for AI Transparency

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 28th Feb 2024 in News

On today’s ExchangeWire digest: Retail Media is Fastest Growing Form of Ad Spend; Microsoft’s Deal with Mistral AI Faces EU Scrutiny; Investors Push Apple for AI Transparency

Retail media is expected to make up one-fifth of worldwide digital ad spend in 2024, according to a forecast by eMarketer. Worldwide retail media spend is expected to reach a total of USD $140bn (£110bn) this year. With a growth rate of over 20%, retail media is currently the fastest growing form of ad spend.

In the AI arena, Microsoft has announced a new partnership with French startup Mistral AI. The startup will receive an investment of €15m (£12m) from the tech giant; the company is currently valued at €2bn (£1.7bn). On Monday, Mistral AI announced the launch of a new large language model named Mistral Largel, designed to rival leading models such as Chat GPT-4. The model is said to have “unique reasoning capacities”, as well as being fluent in five languages. In line with the European Commission’s (EC) ongoing scrutiny of partnerships in the tech landscape, the deal has come to the watchdog’s attention. The watchdog will be investigating the investment.

In the UK, major investors are pushing Apple for transparency surrounding AI. The tech giant has been called on to publish transparency reports regarding its use of AI and associated risk management. Certain firms are backing a resolution for Apple to disclose information about the ethics and usage of its AI tech; they plan to raise the issue at an upcoming shareholder meeting due to take place this week. In the current landscape, there are growing concerns around AI being used to create harmful deepfakes.